A few blue ram breeding set-up questions

is it just blue rams in the tank?

The rams may spawn in your hard water, but their eggs won't hatch and develop properly. If you want to breed rams, you will have to have an RO unit and the knowledge and ability to slowly change their water from hard to soft and I suppose back again. I don't recommend it... unless you are very very experienced. Yes, the shock of moving from one hardness to another is traumatic for a fish, it sends them in osmotic shock... not a good plan.

A 10g is too small to keep a pair of rams in for long IME. Also, they have huge clutches of eggs. So, once the fry start growing, you will absolutely have to have at LEAST a 40g. They have hundreds of eggs/fry... usually around 150, unless wild caught or close to it. Then they have 200-400.

If you want to make this work, you'll have to surrender your idea of keeping the 20h a hard water tank, or buy another 20g (Long) and use that to keep your pair in. Then pull the eggs if they won't parent raise them. They need to spawn in soft water, as hard water makes the eggs impermeable to proper fertilization.

Rams cannot live in straight RO, you need to add back electrolytes, etc to the water. (Kent makes RO Right, which is a good product.) I usually just mix tap and RO to get the right amount of hardness for rams. (gh 4-6, kh 2-3)

Once I pull the eggs, they go in straight RO. I hatch them in straight RO, then gradually add in a bit of tap by the time they are a couple of weeks old. (Maybe 2 cups tap for 4g's water) By about a month, their hardness is the same as the parent tank. Then over the next 3-4 months as they are growing out, I harden the water a lot. They need the calcium for bone development. So, by the time they are ready for sale, their water is pH 7.6, gh is about 10. (Good medium water makes it easier for them to adapt to the water conditions of whoever buys the fish.)

If you pull the eggs and raise them, you can expect to have an over crowded tank with required daily water changes for 3-4 months. It is work and you MUST change that water. They are very sensitive to TDS and even though nitrates might have a low reading, if the water isn't changed, deformities will develop. (Gill plates will be too small - I learned the hard way.)

In case you haven't read my how I do it article, I'll include a link. I can't caution you enough, it takes work to raise healthy rams. (Then you sell them off to your lfs, only to be bought by people who don't know what they are doing and proceed to kill them.... I'm not breeding them anymore. I've gotten a bit cynical...)

Cathy
http://www.cathygeier.freeservers.com click on Aquarium Link. Sorry about the ads.

If you want to breed them, then only have them in the 20. They won't be bothered and you won't have to worry about other fish eating the eggs. Caviar is nearly every fish's favorite delicacy.

The carbon shouldn't do anything to the buffering that Blackwater Extract does other than remove the yellowish tint from the water.

Focus on providing a stable softwater environment for your Rams first. Then once they start spawning and you have fry to deal with you can work on the grow out tanks.

Rams are tough, I never had long term luck. The one time I got the eggs to hatch, they were great for about 12 days, then the parents layed another batch of eggs and started treating the free swimmers as wigglers. (They kept putting them back in the pit). The ones that survived got ich and died within a week, but most apparently starved.

Best of Luck. The best blue rams are from ronbak at aquabid!